In Havana, the lifts have been granted indefinite leave. The high-rise residents of Cuba's capital now find themselves engaged in a perverse sort of national fitness programme: the Stairmaster of the Soul. Each ascent to a tenth-floor flat is a Via Crucis without the promise of resurrection.
The elevators stand like metal tombs, their doors sealed with the quiet dignity of the defeated. One imagines the ghost of Hemingway, stuck on floor six, muttering 'To whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the electric company.' The blackouts are not so much scheduled as they are whimsical.
They arrive like an uninvited relative with a passion for darkness. The government blames the embargo, the inefficiency, the stars. But the residents know the truth: the grid is held together by hope and spare parts from a 1957 DeSoto.
Meanwhile, the street-level entrepreneurs have adapted. They sell candles, batteries, and the precious illusion of control. In the high-rises, the elderly sit by windows, watching the city go dark in sections.
They remember when the lights stayed on. They remember when certainty was a thing you could hold, like a glass of water. Now they hold their breath.
The uncertainty is the only constant. It clings to the walls, settles in the lungs. To live here is to climb forever.
There is no top floor. There is only the next step, the next blackout, the next flicker of a bulb like a dying star. And still, they climb.
